Chapter Text
Vladimir is angry.
He is furious.
The Party was supposed to fix everything. But then those people, those capitalist pigs, they came around and ruined it all.
His family doesn't understand him. They say he's obsessed. That the Party couldn't have solved anything.
Why couldn't they understand?
Why couldn't they see what he sees?
It's people like them that allowed the Party to collapse in the first place, Vladimir thinks.
He gets up from the dinner table. His elderly father asks where he's going.
"Anywhere but here!" he yells, and storms out the door.
Ryman is heartbroken. Torn apart. A wreck.
Her apartment is a mess. Her face is worse.
Hours, nearly days of crying has left its mark. The near week-old makeup sags on her skin.
Makeup she put on to look beautiful for him.
Another hollow scream rips her throat apart. She tosses the bottle beside her at the wall. It shatters, shards littering the floor. The alcohol in the bottle trails slowly down the wall and pools at the bottom.
She cannot stop thinking of his face. His smile. His goodbye.
Ryman reaches for a drink to drown herself in once more, anything to get rid of the memories.
But she comes up empty. The bottle she threw at the wall was the last she had. She groans as she rises from the floor, kicking empty bottles aside. She grabs her tattered wallet and stumbles out of her apartment.
Alexei is alone. He has never made an impact on anything. He is a ghost.
He sits at his computer wondering, dreaming, of doing something that will get him seen.
His clothes vaguely reek of gunpowder. Probably from the hundred or so rounds he'd fired today. He'd stared down the sights of his rifle at a white and black paper target all day.
He wonders what it would be like if he aimed at something else.
His 'friends' find him weird. But Alexei does not care about what they think. He doesn't even consider them friends.
They laugh and joke together and Alexei just sits there and smiles. But when he opens his mouth it is like the mood has been derailed.
His eyes hurt. He's been staring at the screen for too long.
Alexei gets up and leaves his room. He walks past the living room, where his father is asleep on the couch. He slips out the front door, with no destination in mind.
Vladimir runs his finger along the rim of his cup. He's seated at a table for one, in an empty bar he found. It was the only one open anyways.
There's a woman seated to his right, at the bar counter. Blond hair. A pile of shot glasses are gathered in front of her. All empty.
She groans for another. The bartender obliges and brings her one more. It is emptied near instantly.
Vladimir can hear her sobbing. He hears her mutter the name "Sergiy". He wonders if the woman is referring to his relative. He hopes it's just a coincidence.
The door swings open, and another customer steps in. The customer is young. Way younger than Vladimir. He's not even sure the teen is of legal drinking age.
The boy walks over to the bar counter and sits a couple of seats away from the woman. The bartender asks to see his ID. The boy pulls a card out of his wallet and slides it across the counter. It seems to satisfy the bartender, and he asks the boy for his order.
"Anything light will do," he replies. The bartender turns around and gets to work. Vladimir returns his attention to his drink, taking another sip as he relishes in the soothing burn that the alcohol brought. He looks back at the boy. The kid is calm, yet doesn't look like someone who drank a lot. Vladimir figures it's the boy's first drink. He thinks back to his first beer decades ago. Oh, how simple those days were, he thinks.
"Hey, gimme another," Vladimir hears the woman say, still slumped over on the counter.
"Ma'am, I think you've had more than enough." the bartender says as he hands the boy his drink.
"Just pour me another you fuckhead," she responds, placing a crumpled bill on the counter.
"Ma'am I'm not going to-"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" she yells, grabbing a glass and throwing it at the man. The bartender ducks and the glass sails over him, smashing into fragments as it hits the wall.
The woman gets up from the counter and stumbles backwards. She trips over a chair and falls into a table. Vladimir's table. He barely manages to save his drink before the woman takes the wooden table down with her.
"Shit," he mutters aloud to no one in particular. The boy at the counter has also risen from his seat and is slowly making his way over to the wreck of a woman that is lying on the floor.
"Bloody hell," the bartender says, looking at the carnage. "Chick's crazy."
The woman is muttering something again. Her face is streaked with dried tear. She stinks of alcohol. Vladimir downs the rest of his drink and leaves the cup on an undamaged table beside him. He hesitates for a while before ultimately deciding to help the woman to her feet. The boy, seeing his actions, decides to follow suit and they grab one arm each before hoisting the woman to her feet.
"Hey," the bartender calls out to them. "You think you can take the chick back to her home? I need to clean up this damn mess, and I don't need the cops coming at this hour."
Before Vladimir can think of responding, the boy beats him to it.
"Yeah, sure," he says.
"Thanks, I owe y'all a drink the next time you come around."
The duo carry the woman out of the bar, her arms slung over their shoulders. She mutters gibberish as they stumble along, but Vladimir can swear he hears the same name the woman had said earlier.
"Hey lass," Vladimir says. "Where do you live?"
She groans in response. Vladimir uses his free hand to find the woman's wallet. He flips it open and pulls out an ID card. The address is listed on it.
"Alright, listen-" he pauses to look at the name on the card. "Ryman. We're gonna get you home, yeah?"
Vladimir has no idea why he's going to such lengths for some random drunk, but among the yelling voices in his head there is a shred of humanity that tells him to.
The woman nods and mutters something. Again, Vladimir cannot hear what she says. He simply gestures to the boy to keep moving.
Alexei didn't think this was how his night would go.
He just wanted some fresh air. He had seen an open bar, and having never drank before decided that tonight would be a great night to try.
Instead, he was dragging a drunk woman back to her apartment, accompanied by a man nearly as old as his dad. And he hadn't even got to have the drink the bartender served him.
They haul the woman up the steps to her place. Alexei isn't that physically strong, but he can pull his weight. The duo reach her apartment, and the man pushes the door open. It isn't even locked, Alexei notes.
The place is a mess.
Alexei is a tidy person. His room is kept clean and pristine. Books are neatly arranged on the shelves, boxes kept in proper stacks, bed made clean. This woman's apartment is the exact opposite of his room. There are empty beer bottles on the ground. Shattered glass and uncleaned spills. Pots and plates left discarded in the sink. Books and photos occupy the woman's bed and sofa. The man clears some of the stuff off the bed and eases the woman onto it. She sinks into the bed and doesn't move an inch.
Alexei stands in the corner, looking at the mess around him. The apartment is small, a single bedroom and a kitchen that was connected to a living room. So little space for such a big mess.
He can't stand it.
He looks around for a broom. He finds one tucked in a closet and he starts sweeping. The old man is sitting on the sofa, watching him. Alexei is not sure who the man is or what he wants, but he cares more about tidying the place than he does of the stranger.
He picks up the bottles left on the ground. He packs the books on the grounds and arranges them on the empty shelves. He gathers the photographs in a stack, photo of the woman with someone else. A man. He puts them on a table. The old man has gotten up from the sofa. He's doing the dishes. Alexei is not sure if the man is helping him clean up because he's a tidy person too or if he felt awkward sitting there, but once again he does not care.
The cleaning takes time. Nearly 2 hours as the two tidy up the apartment that belonged to neither of them. Once Alexei dumps the last of the trash in the bin, they sit down on the sofa together. The woman is out cold in her bedroom. He too is beat. Too tired to get up. He hopes the woman won't mind him being there in the morning when she wakes. He would come up with a good excuse, leave, and never have to speak of this again.
"Hey kid," the man suddenly says. "What's your name?"
Alexei responds mindlessly.
"Alexei. Alexei Tarasov."
"Vladimir," the man introduces. "Vladimir Koltsov."
Alexei smiles awkwardly. The man says nothing back. Sleep comes for them both soon enough.
Ryman's head hurts.
She wakes. The morning sun shines brightly through her window with a warm glow. She's lying comfortably on her bed, which shouldn't be possible since she swears she hasn't cleared the mess on it.
She gets up slowly, heart hammering steadily in her chest. She doesn't remember much from last night. She knows she had stumbled into some bar, but she can't recall ever leaving or how she got home.
Ryman feels like her room is cleaner than usual. She smells something cooking. Had she left the stove on? Was her house burning down? Probably not, since it smelled like food. And she was starving.
She opens her room door. There is a man in her kitchen, cooking something over the stove. A man she doesn't know.
She gasps.
The man turns around.
"Oh, uh, hey," he says. "Kind of, uh, decided to cook something up. I figured y'all could use breakfast."
"Y'all?"
Ryman turns to her living room. There is a teenager asleep on her couch.
"Fuck," she says. "What the hell did I get up to last night?"
"You uh, you kind of got drunk as hell at a bar," the man responds. Ryman sees now that he's cooking scrambled eggs.
"Bartender forced us to bring you home, and that one," he continues, gesturing with a nod to the boy on the sofa. "That one decided to clean up your apartment. I helped a bit and we uh, we kind of fell asleep? Sorry."
Ryman has no idea how to respond. She does like the way her apartment looks now though, without the mess.
Without all the photos of Sergiy.
She can feel her heart cry out at the thought of him.
The boy is stirring from his sleep. Ryman sees him stretch and yawn.
The man is done cooking. He grabs 3 plates and some utensils and sets it down on the table, then drags a chair over. She grabs a chair too, and scoops up some eggs from the pan to her plate.
"So uh... who are ya'll?" she finally asks.
"Vladimir," the man says. "Kid's called Alexei."
The boy waves weakly.
"Right," Ryman says. "Thanks, I guess, for doing so much for me."
Vladimir shrugs. Alexei stays silent.
"Don't you two have places to be?" she says, curious.
"My dad won't miss me much," Alexei says.
"I don't really want to go home right now either." Vladimir responds.
Ryman sighs. She figures she should be grateful for these strangers. They've done more for her than Sergiy ever did.
She supposes they aren't too bad.
Vladimir has no idea where all his anger has gone, but it's a welcome change.
Ryman's heart feels a lot more at peace, and Sergiy feels like the past now.
Alexei feels like he belongs, somewhat, and he likes it.
Perhaps this was the start of something better. For all of them.